Syria chemical weapons watchdog OPCW wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO (QHA) - The global chemical weapons watchdog charged with overseeing destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile during a civil war won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, informs Reuters.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a small organization with a modest budget, dispatched its experts after a sarin gas attack killed more than 1,400 people in August.
As reported, the $1.25 million prize will be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, said that the award was a reminder to nations with big stocks, such as the United States and Russia, to get rid of their own reserves "especially because they are demanding that others do the same, like Syria".
"We now have the opportunity to get rid of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction….That would be a great event in history if we could achieve that," he said.
To be noted, the award marks a return to the classical disarmament roots of the prize after some recent awards, such as to the European Union last year and U.S. President Barack Obama in 2009.
Those awards led to criticism that the committee was out of line with the spirit of prize, founded by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.